Rants & Reviews

March 2018

18 March 2018

I read these nine interconnected stories with my ears as a CD book in my car, and they made me want to scarf up every book this adroit writer has written. Apparently, this novel-in-stories was written after Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton and gives context to the village from which Lucy came. We meet adults who came up through poverty and bullying and abuse. As adults, they have their hang-ups but they also have no small dollop of empathy and perception. Each story creates a complete world around a nuanced character and they all made me give a damn – for they give a damn.

You might know Elizabeth Strout’s other books: Amy and Isabelle and Olive Kitteridge. Oh, did I mention that Strout is a Pulitzer Prize winner?

16 March 2018

This is the letter I wrote to my friend just hours before she died. Her husband Jim, who cared for her for many years, read it to her and said that she sent her love to me. I'll put in the link to her obituary at the end for those who want to learn more about her.

March 13, 2018

Dear Linda,

When Jim told me that you are gravely ill, I remembered back to when we first met. I was working for a huge British non-profit that promoted full-time volunteerism. I had just been promoted to developing international partnerships. As my parents lived in Pittsburgh, I decided that a partnership in Pittsburgh would be just the thing to pay for my flights for yearly visits.

Through the University of Pittsburgh, I found you in your Oakland office just a block or two from my parents’ apartment. There you were sending young people to Europe to be nannies. Organizationally, it was a perfect fit. Personally it was mutual love at first sight.

We began sharing hotel rooms at European conferences. It took us a bit of time to work it out – you with your stream-of-consciousness chatting and me with my need to sit in silence and write every day. But we fell into a pattern smoothed by love. One time in Paris you arrived later than me and when you came into the room, you had a perplexed look on your face. “I was unable to get my bag off the luggage carousel,” you told me. You were such a seasoned traveler that this made no sense. Later we realized that this was one of your first symptoms.

That night we went out to a brasserie that you knew and I had the best steak I had ever eaten. Little did I know that it was only one steak of many that I would savor as a result of our friendship. Every time I visited you in Pittsburgh, Jim would grill me the best steaks in the world. I certainly have always dined well at the Greenberg café!

Speaking of meat, when my parents heard we were meeting up at some European conference or other, they came by your house, despite having never met you, to ask you bring me a Kosher salami they had brought for me, which of course you did.

On one visit, we went shopping for eyeglasses for your daughter – then just a teenager – in a part of Pittsburgh that was being yuppified and reinvented. You re-introduced me to my very changed hometown.

I’ll never forget how you turned up at my dad’s funeral. It was such a special gesture on your part and looking up and seeing you there during my eulogy was incredibly comforting. But then generosity is one of your strongest cards. I have luxuriated in your basement accommodations more than once at your invitation.

You’ve met many of my closest friends – from Barry to Sandy – and always welcomed them into your home. I appreciate your ability to embrace new people, which is probably one of the reasons you were so successful at your work. Then too, there is your tenacity. Long before “She persisted” became a feminist cry, you fought for your rights as a person with a disability, becoming an expert in your field. We even formed a non-profit to propagate your knowledge and to introduce children to a person in a wheelchair ready to share her story.

I’ve learned tons from you, but most poignantly, I’ve been showered with love from you. I thank you and kiss you and miss you.

13 March 2018

I spent Saturday at the LOCS 6th annual conference. LOCS and some folks from the organization I work with, Boston OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), have a collaborative relationship and we were welcome to attend. In fact, kudos to LOCS for offering a Senior Discount!

This year’s theme was “Involve to Evolve: Your Silence Will Not Protect You.” Co- founder and President Shaunya Thomas (left with me), who has been an impressive speaker at OLOC, opened Saturday’s conference and then served as MC throughout. Trey Anthony, the well-known Canadian personality, gave a high-energy keynote on self-preservation. Her fab self-love tag line, which she advised us to append to complicated answers, was “I’m the shits!”

I attended a popular workshop on “Exploring Mainstream Media Messages and its Impact on the Representation of People of Color,” presented comprehensively by an informed and animated TiElla Grimes. Her prime point was: Always consider the messenger before you consider the message. She described the changing media landscape, including the consolidation of ownership. In 1983 90% of major media was owned by 50 companies; today it is merely 6 companies (CBS, GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, and Time/Warner).

Then, during lunch, we listened to another keynote. The young speaker, Brittany Ferrell (left), earned her chops on the streets of Ferguson after the murder of Michael Brown by a white police officer on August 9, 2014. During the ongoing protests, she founded a group called Millennial Activists United (MAU). I was blown away by the calm brilliance of Brittany Ferrell’s analysis in a talk titled, “Unapologetic Queer Black Women and Women of Color: Nothing About Us Without Us.” Using her personal story to inform her broad view, she included a lot of information. For example, I learned that while Black women are now the most educated group in the US, they are projected to have $0 wealth within the next 30 years.

The final panel discussion was Bisexual Narratives: A People of Color Perspective, moderated smoothly by Bianca Phoenix, who has also been on an OLOC panel in the past. She hosted four women from varied cultures and experiences with a truly nuanced look at bi issues. Bianca said that 50% of LGBTQ people of color identify as bi and that the bi community is more racially diverse than the general population. Simone Davis got smiling nods from the audience when she said she didn’t come out to her mother until she had her own job and apartment, so that she’d have somewhere to go when her Jamaican mother chased her down the street. Apphia Kumar talked about coming out as a lesbian in India, only to later claim her bisexual identity. Tanekwah Hinds told us about a nasty experience of racism in a hospital ER and also pointed to the amount of explaining a bi person has to do with potential partners. Priscilla Lee provided a range of resources, not the least around issues of immigration and bisexuality.

I am grateful to LOCS for organizing this wide-ranging conference and highlighting such illuminating intersectional views.